This afternoon, Attorney General Martha Coakley unsealed a criminal indictment against Matthew Israel, founder and executive director of the Judge Rotenberg Center – a special needs school in Canton, Massachusetts that serves students with autism, emotional, and psychiatric problems. The indictment outlined two counts of criminal behavior by Israel related to the repeated, painful and deliberate application of electric skin shocks to two children and the subsequent attempted cover-up. One child was shocked twenty-nine times, another seventy-seven times, sometimes while restrained, causing burns so severe that they needed to be hospitalized. Israel, ordered by state officials to preserve video of the events, instead ordered the destruction of the evidence, according to the grand jury. In order to avoid prosecution and a possible prison term, Israel agreed to disassociate himself from the school and has received five years probation.

State Senator Brian A. Joyce, whose district includes the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, issued the following statement.

“For forty years, Matthew Israel has profited by and made a career of preying on the most vulnerable of our citizens, our disabled children. In just the past ten years, Israel’s JRC spent over $15 million on lawyers, members of my own profession, to protect an enterprise that generated over $400 million in revenue during that same period. That career is now brought to a shameful end.

But the practice of applying what the United Nations determined to be “torture” on innocent and helpless children continues. This week, I anticipate that the Massachusetts Senate will again pass safeguards to protect these defenseless special needs children. I call upon Governor Deval Patrick and Speaker Robert DeLeo to join Senate President Therese Murray and my Senate colleagues in standing up for these vulnerable disabled children."